First Year Experience Reading Project
The Kite Runner
By Khaled Hosseini
Summer 2007
Welcome to the Florida Gulf Coast University First Year Experience Reading Project! Every year, all first year students and many faculty join together to read and enjoy a common book. Students will be introduced to FGCU’s nine learning goals during orientation; these learning goals are at the heart of all our academic programs. The reading project for this year provides a foundation for meeting FGCU Learning Goal #5: Ethical Responsibility. As you will learn throughout your college career, “ethics” refers to “the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation” (Merriam Webster online). At FGCU, we have defined the learning outcome in this way:
Goal 5: Ethical responsibility. Know and understand the key ethical issues related to a variety of disciplines and professions. Analyze and evaluate key ethical issues in a variety of disciplinary and professional contexts. Participate in collaborative projects requiring ethical analysis and/or decision-making.
The First Year Reading Experience Project asks that you consider this important concept in relation to a best-selling and critically acclaimed work of contemporary literature, The Kite Runner.
Fall Semester Composition I & II Assignment
Directions: Before you begin to read The Kite Runner, review the questions below with care. As you read the book closely, make notes in the margins and highlight passages that you find important. Select ONE of the following questions, and write a 1-2 page typed, double spaced essay. Be sure to include a clear thesis, supporting passages from the novel, and correct grammar and mechanics.
While you may not use any outside sources, you must cite at least one specific passage from the novel to support your thesis, and include the novel on an MLA Work Cited page. Use MLA in-text citation for quotations and/or paraphrases from the novel. If you do not know how to use MLA format, please access the FGCU Library Resource page at http://library.fgcu.edu/ddsg/ddsg.asp?id=3384 (click on MLA Style).
Please bring your completed essay with you on the first day of your Fall 2007 Composition I or II class.
Composition I and II Writing Assignments (Choose One):
1- “There is a way to be good again” (Hosseini 2). This sentence surfaces multiple times in the novel, and seems to drive much of the plot and character development. The novel in its entirety might be interpreted as one man’s effort to atone, and revise himself as a more ethical person. Pick any character in the novel and chart his or her ethical journey.
2- The Afghani-born American novelist Khaled Hosseini also happens to be a medical doctor, and his medical training and professional work may be said to inform his writing. For instance, healing seems to play a key role in The Kite Runner. In fact, we might identify a variety of types of healing, including the physical, psychological, familial, and political. Choose a scene from the novel in which some form of healing plays a significant role and clearly define the type of healing you are going to analyze. Then, analyze the way in which ethics (choices about right and wrong, good and bad) inform the healing in the narrative.
3- The Kite Runner features several heartbreaking scenes of violence and trauma. Some characters use violence and aggression, and others have it used against them. Pick a character whose life is impacted by violence, and trace the way that violence shapes the life of that character. You should focus on the role of their choices, and whether these choices are “right” or “wrong.” How does the character define “right” and “wrong”? How do others perceive these choices? Ultimately, does the novel offer any solutions to violence?
4- Having some sense of what constitutes a sin versus what constitutes a virtue can help people develop their sense of ethics. The character of Baba defines sin as theft. “Every other sin is a variation of theft,” he tells Amir (Hosseini 17). Point to a scene that shows what Baba means about sin and explain your choice. Then, try to determine what the novel might offer readers in the way of a supreme virtue.
5- Reality television can make us forget that fiction also contains important truths about humanity. The Kite Runner features brutal honesty and self-examination. Think of the ways in which honesty and truth-telling operate in this novel. Focus on a moment in the text that hinges on the revelation of some sort of truth. What seems to emerge as true in the ethical sphere of the novel? Do you agree?
6- One of the most amazing things about this novel is the way in which the author makes it possible for us to see a totally different culture with clarity and compassion. He makes Afghanistan in turmoil come alive for the reader, and shows us that not everyone in that country shares the same ethics. Literature in general can serve an important role in the development of ethics because it can broaden our understanding of other people and cultures. Select one passage that deals with an ethical or moral issue, and makes the foreign more familiar for the reader. Then, explain how the novel might deepen our understanding of current events in the Middle East and broaden our ethical perspective.
7- The Kite Runner is a tale filled with hard lessons for its characters, some about ethics, some about loss, and some about life in general. Who learns what in this novel? Identify one character who gets educated by events in the story and has his or her ethical framework changed, broadened, or perhaps reinforced. Choose a passage that illustrates his or her education and analyze that passage.
8- A film adaptation of The Kite Runner is scheduled for release at the end of 2007. Pretend you’ve been hired as an on-set literary consultant. Filmmakers who try to adapt novels have a tough job: they must select which elements of the literary source material to keep, and which elements to discard. (Most novels are just too long to film word-for-word, and technological differences force other choices.) Write a memo advising director Marc Foster. Name two of the most important scenes to keep, and explain your choices. They should be scenes that deal with an ethical dilemma. You might also consider how they should be rendered on film.
Be careful to spend some time thinking about and drafting ideas regarding the question that you choose. Most importantly, don’t forget to enjoy the process!
Contact Information
Linda Rowland
Email:
Phone: (239) 590-7254